The WORST: GOG Cut for Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall Unity

With the final version of Daggerfall Unity now coming into Release Candidates (Basically the real, non gog version of Daggerfall Unity is almost 1.0), the Lead Developer of Daggerfall Unity himself has gone on record as denouncing the GOG Cut as a SEVERELY outdated, containing countless bugs and issues that have been fixed, and more importantly, containing mods that, even if they were not outdated (which they are) compromise the original vision of Daggerfall, something Daggerfall Unity attempts to minimize with default settings. Thus, the GoG Cut isn't good for first time players, who should know the difference between the vision for the original game versus modified.

Thank you for the video. Last September, I tried contacting the GOG representative, who first contacted me in June about the Cut, to ask him if the GOG Cut was going to eventually going to be updated, for both DFU itself and the mods. I never got an answer. My expectations are very, very low here that GOG will suddenly take time and money to update it, since it doesn't bring people to their store like it did back then it got released. Save yourselves the frustration and get DFU from Interkarma and select your mods from Nexus. They're easier to install and manage than the other Bethesda titles. ;)

People forget how important physical media is. You cannot have property rights if you do not have property.

It's nice they put it out, but I find Daggerfall is so involved in the first place with features that the original game with certain tweeks Unity already provide in the menu (namely, click attack, repair magic item and the guild quest list) are more than enough to make it nearly perfect for me. Daggerfall Unity is, in my opinion, the greatest, most significant modding project in the history of CRPGs, as it took a broken classic and made it what it was capable of being. No mods are really necessary to sing it's praises. It's base features are already a miracle of restoration.

Isn't this the "GamerZakh" edition? He made a couple Daggerfall Unity videos. The first one was like the only hour he played. The second was him bragging about he only played Daggerfall one time and was approched by GOG to help with the mods they were going to release with the GOG version of DFU. It seemed kind of weird GOG chose someone who had almost no playtime of the game to help with the mod pack.

I was intimidated by manually modding Daggerfall Unity, so I started with the GOG cut, then tweaked to my own taste. Everything worked out fine for me. I think this was a great idea for GOG to do this as it gave new players a pain-free gateway into the amazing world of Daggerfall.

40+ hours into the GOG Cut and not a single crash yet, so your worry about the crashing seems to be unfounded in my case. Also, it was a good way to get introduced to the modding aspect, and I can update or remove the individual mods on the cut as I see fit (I've turned off auto updating for the GOG Cut in case they ever do decide to release an update, as I prefer to be in control.) I've even updated the Unity version just fine with no issues. The main reason why I disagree with the general sentiment here, is because I wasn't even aware there was a Unity engine remake until the GOG Cut, and I'm sure it was the same for many people. The GOG Cut is a good thing by the sole reason that it brought awareness to its existence to people. Yeah, they didn't go about it the right way (they should have gotten permission from the mod authors), but I'm grateful that it's there otherwise I never would have known it existed. Now, if people choose to get the regular unity version after trying the GOG Cut, then all the better.

I'm unsure of what you'll be saying about the GOG cut but when I saw them release it, I was quite bothered by the mod list. Having DREAM already be installed on it for example can make the game much harder on systems than the game would be without it and, if they're trying to have an easy way for people to jump into an older game, could turn people off of the game who may not know enough about the game to know what is causing problems or may not know how to turn off or remove mods entirely. If I were to release a better cut I would try to only have mods and settings that remain faithful to the original game and it's spirit/intentions and make sure most anyone can still run the game.

GoG should have just asked the Dagger Unity devs if they would allow for the port to be available for download from Daggerfall's Library page and have a link/video to Zakh's tutorial on how to manually install mods from Nexus.

Hey Zaric! I owe you a big thank you for everything Daggerfall-related. Not only for this great informational video, but also for all the previous ones, as you are the person who made me discover Daggerfall in the first place, years ago, in a time where I was not yet accustomed to commenting on videos, with your "Before Skyrim" series. 💛 Also Merry Christmas! 😉

I'm of the opinion that the general attitude that exists in the DFU modding community where everyone feels like they have absolute control over their mods and can prevent others from making improvements or modding/adding to their own work, has done nothing but stifle the development of the community to the point that now, we have at best, a few QOL and graphics mods and 1 or 2 quest mods and basically nothing else. This is only made worse by the fact that it's general policy over there to not include source code with released mods, which with the way DFU modding works only makes it more difficult to actually fix bugs of mods where the author has gone cold, because you can't open mods in Unity without their source code. Making patches so that two mods work together is pretty much non-existent in the community as a result. Since any attempt to go through code and make patches requires you to first get the source from the mod owner, who'll either refuse and tell you to send your code to them so they can incorporate it, or they won't respond because the last time they were on was a year ago, or maybe if you're lucky after a few days you'll get a response. This slows modding to a crawl. I get it, they feel like they have the right to demand control over their mod. But here's the thing, they're already messing with something that doesn't belong to them. Modding is a community effort. DFU's modding scene will never reach the heights it can with the kind of gatekeeping that goes on there.

Playing the world's smallest violin for mod authors, yet again.

I'm so glad you made this video Zaric. I was thinking about getting into Daggerfally Unity but had no idea that the GOG version was so F up. Thank you for this high quality informative video.

"Nothing online is permanent" except for the things you least want to be. 🙂

i disabled sprinting on horseback, i personally hated the idea that i would have to look out for and dodge randomly spawning NPCs when im dashing across town looking for a specific residence. with a sufficient speed skill the horse is fast enough anyway, the sprint feature on horseback always felt a bit egregious to me anyway.

As a mod cocreator (Wildernes Overhaul), thank you for speaking out, Zaric!

Good intentions. Bad execution.

I'm not really sure what the problem is with the mod authors not being asked. GOG isn't selling the GOG cut. They aren't selling their mods.

MY GOD IT'S HIM YOUNG SENATOR ARMSTRONG!!

This guy's got a tie on to play Daggerfall, Respect 🙏 I don't even know where my tie is.